In 2014, the Woodstock Film Festival hit a milestone with its 15th Anniversary and it was celebrated with style. Filmmakers attended at an all time high from all corners of the world as WFF presented 22 world premieres; 5 North American premieres, 2 US premieres, 18 East Coast premieres and 21 New York Premieres. Celebrities, including Natalie Portman, Jennifer Connelly, Courteney Cox, Seann William Scott, Robert Vaughn and Paul Wesley added press and audience buzz.

2014 is coming to a close and we need your help.
The Film Center, which houses the Woodstock Film Festival and Hudson Valley Film Commission NEEDS REPAIRS including:
• Replacement of roof shingles and underlayment on building and garage
• Installation of attic insulation (to keep heat in)
• Replacement of windows with energy efficient units
• Electric work needs updating
• New gutters to replace broken, torn units
• Exterior painting in the spring
• plus we have other pressing needs.

To make a DONATION please CLICK HERE
or you can mail a check made payable to:
WOODSTOCK FILM FESTIVAL
Checks can be sent to
PO BOX 1406,
Woodstock, NY 12498
or dropped off at
13 Rock City Road, Woodstock, NY 12498, weekdays from 9-5pm.

Thank you for your kind consideration.

CALL FOR ENTRIES

The 16th Annual Woodstock Film Festival is now open for submissions. We are looking for films in all categories including narratives, documentaries, shorts, music videos, animation and teen films.

We are looking forward to year 16, which will feature lots of special year round events and programs at the Fall Festival, September 30 - October 5, 2015. Stay tuned for upcoming announcements!

AWARDS SEASON

The Hollywood Award season has kicked off in earnest with the announcements of nominations from major competitions like the Golden Globes and the SAG Awards and Oscar nominations are just a month away. Two films with WFF ties are major players.

BOYHOOD directed by 2009 WFF Maverick Award Honoree Richard Linklater is raking in the nominations. The film, which was filmed over the course of 12 years and stars WFF Advisory Board member Ethan Hawke, has garnered multiple nominations from SAG and the Golden Globes and has already won Best Picture, Best Director and Best Actress (Patiricia Arquette) from both the NY and LA Film Critics.

BOYHOOD has grabbed 5 Golden Globe nominations
including Best Picture, Best Director and Best Screenplay. The film also picked up 3 nominations from the SAG Awards including Best Cast, Best Supporting Actress (Arquette) and Best Supporting Actor (Hawke).

Meanwhile, THE IMITATION GAME (a 2014 WFF highlight) is also piling up the nominations. The film has picked up 3 nods from the Sag Awards for Best Cast, Best Actor (Benedict Cumberbatch) and Supporting Actress (Kiera Knightly) as well as 4 Globes Award including Best Picture Drama, Best Actor and Best Screenplay.

FILMMAKER THOUGHTS: ANDREA KALIN

Syrian Activist Abu Jaffar

Andrea Kalin and Oliver Lukacs accept the Best Documentary Award at WFF2014

This month, WFF continue to bring you thoughts from participating filmmakers. Andrea Kalin co-directed the powerful documentary RED LINES with Oliver Lukacs. The picture won the Films We Like Best Feature Documentary Award. The film goes inside Syria to focus on the tragedies unfolding during the ongoing civil war.

YouTube and the Syrian Revolution
Since the outbreak of the Syrian Revolution it’s been near impossible to gather firsthand news and images of what’s happening on the ground. As the situation deteriorated and the conflict escalated, reporting from inside Syria became not just dangerous, but suicidal.

According to the Committee to Protect Journalists [www.cpj.org], 77 professional journalists have been killed inside Syria since 2011 making Syria the most dangerous war zone in the world.

But in the vacuum of professional news coverage came forth a network of hundreds of citizen journalists armed with cellphones. With a click, brave activists captured gritty, unfiltered images of life inside war-torn Syria on their mobile phones and uploaded more than 300,000 videos to YouTube for an audience of millions worldwide.

While they may not be wielding assault rifles and RPGs on the front lines, many citizen journalists live under the constant threat of the Assad regime’s attempts to unveil their online identities that, if revealed, would mean arrest, torture or even death for them and their families.

To honor those who are selflessly risking their lives to document the Syrian uprising, the first ever Syria Mobile Phone Film Festival was created. The festival, which includes 13 original short films, features a wide variety of genres (documentary, experimental, narrative) all focusing on life for Syrians living in the shadow of a violent, armed conflict.

The 2015 Sundance Film Festival (@sundancefest) is rapidly approaching and there are a number of films that the Woodstock Film Festival is keeping tabs on, includingWHAT HAPPENED MISS SIMONE?, which was partly filmed in the Hudson Valley by director Liz Garbus.

A number of other filmmakers who have found their way to Woodstock over the years, will be premiering their newest works at Park City.

1998 Academy Award nominee Liz Garbus (THE FARM: ANGOLA, USA) has had a longtime association with WFF, starting in 2003 when she brought her film(GIRLHOOD)to Woodstock. In 2013 she sat on a WFF panel and served as a juror for the Documentary Feature award. Her new documentary explores the life of Nina Simone.

A classically trained musical genius, chart-topping chanteuse, and Black Power icon, Nina Simone is one of the most influential, beloved, provocative, and least understood artists of our time. On stage, she was known for utterly free, rapturous performances, earning her the epithet "High Priestess of Soul." But amid the violent, day-to-day fight for civil rights, she struggled to reconcile artistic ambition with her fierce devotion to a movement. Director Liz Garbus sensitively explores the constant state of opposition that trapped and tortured Simone—as a classical pianist pigeonholed in jazz, as a professional boxed in by family life, as a black woman in racist America—and in so doing, reveals a towering figure transcending categorization and her times. The film stays true to Simone's subjectivity by mining never-before-heard tapes, rare archival footage, and interviews with close friends and family. Charting Simone’s musical inventiveness alongside the arc of her Jim Crow childhood, defining role in the Civil Rights Movement, arrival at Carnegie Hall, self-imposed exile in Liberia, and solitary life in France, this astonishingly intimate yet epic portrait becomes a non-fiction musical—lush tracks and riveting story resonating inextricably. (Courtesy Sundance)

Kurt Cobain: Montage of Heck

KURT COBAIN: MONTAGE OF HECKDirected by Brett Morgan

Brett Morgan has served WFF in three capacities, as a juror in 2005 for the Best Documentary Feature Award, as a panelist in 2008 and then as a filmmaker in 2010 with his documentaryCHICAGO 10.Morgan now delves into the life and death of Kurt Cobain in a fully authorized film on the iconic grunge rocker.

Experience Kurt Cobain like never before in the first fully authorized portrait of the famed rock music icon. Director Brett Morgen expertly blends Cobain's personal archive of art, music, and never-before-seen home movies with animation and revelatory interviews with his family and closest confidantes. Following Kurt from his earliest years in Aberdeen, Washington, through the height of his fame, a visceral and detailed cinematic insight of an artist at odds with his surroundings emerges.

While Cobain craved the spotlight even as he rejected the trappings of fame, his epic arc depicts a man who stayed true to his earliest punk rock convictions, always identifying with the "outsider" and ensuring the music came first.

Fans and those of the Nirvana generation will learn things about Cobain they never knew while those who have recently discovered the man and his music will know what makes him the lasting icon that he is. (Courtesy Sundance)

Going Clear: Scientology
and the Prison of Belief

GOING CLEAR: SCIENTOLOGY AND THE PRISON OF BELIEFDirected by Alex Gibney (@alexgibneyfilm)

WFF has screened three films directed by acclaimed filmmaker Alex Gibney (CLIENT 9, FREAKONOMICS, MEA MAXIMA CULPA). Gibney's highhly anticipated documentary; GOING CLEAR: SCIENTOLOGY AND THE PRISON OF BELIEFexplores the depths of Scientology. This is Gibney's 10th time at Sundance.

Following MEA MAXIMA CULPA, his investigation into the Catholic Church, Academy Award-winner Alex Gibney turns his gaze to Scientology in GOING CLEAR based on the book of the same name by Pulitzer Prize-winning author Lawrence Wright.

Gibney profiles eight former members of the Church of Scientology, whose most prominent adherents include A-list Hollywood celebrities, shining a light on how the church cultivates true believers, including their experiences and what they are willing to do in the name of religion. The film covers a broad range of material from the church’s origins—punctuated by an intimate portrait of founder L. Ron Hubbard—to present-day practices and alleged abuses as reported in the media.

Fearless and fascinating, this latest cinematic opus from the man Esquire dubbed "the most important documentarian of our time" is a powerful exploration of the psychological impact of blind faith—what Lawrence Wright calls the "prison of belief." (Courtesy Sundance)

2014 WFF Filmmaker Patrick Brice (CREEP) makes his Sundance debut with a complete departure from his feature debut. THE OVERNIGHT is a thirtysomething comedy, a complete 180 from the...well...creepy, CREEP.

Alex, Emily, and their son, RJ, have recently moved to Los Angeles’ Eastside from Seattle. Feeling lost in a new city, they are desperate to find their first new friends. After a chance meeting with Kurt at the neighborhood park, they gladly agree to join family pizza night at his home. But as it gets later and the kids go to bed, the family “playdate” becomes increasingly more revealing as the couples begin to open up.

Recently divorced, newly rich, and utterly miserable, Danny (Kevin Corrigan) would seem to be the perfect test subject for a definitive look at the relationship between money and happiness. Danny’s well-funded ennui is interrupted by a momentous trip to the local gym, where he meets self-styled guru/owner Trevor (Guy Pearce) and irresistibly acerbic trainer Kat (Cobie Smulders). Soon, their three lives are inextricably knotted, both professionally and personally. (Courtesy Sundance)

WFF 2009 alum Kyle Patrick Alvarez's (EASIER WITH PRACTICE) thought provoking new feature will make its premiere at Sundance. The film is produced by Brian Gerraghty.

It is the summer of 1971. Dr. Philip Zimbardo launches a study on the psychology of imprisonment. Twenty-four male undergraduates are randomly assigned to be either a guard or a prisoner. Set in a simulated jail, the project unfolds. The participants rapidly embody their roles—the guards become power hungry and sadistic while the prisoners, subject to degradation, strategize as underdogs. It soon becomes clear that, as Zimbardo and team monitor the escalation of action through surveillance cameras, they are not fully aware of how they too have become part of the experiment.

Based on the real-life research of Dr. Zimbardo (who was a consultant on the film), THE STANDFORD PRISON EXPERIMENT) is a dramatic period piece that remains relevant over 40 years later. Along with an impressive cast, including Billy Crudup as Zimbardo, Kyle Patrick Alvarez (C.O.G., 2013 Sundance Film Festival) delivers an intense, visceral film about the role of power that plays to both chilling and exhilarating effect. (Courtesy Sundance)

Morgan Neville is a two time WFF Alum with 2007'sTHE COOL SCHOOLand 2008'sJOHNNY CASH'S AMERICA.

In the summer of 1968, television news changed forever. Dead last in the ratings, ABC hired two towering public intellectuals to debate each other during the Democratic and Republican national conventions. William F. Buckley, Jr. was a leading light of the new conservative movement. A Democrat and cousin to Jackie Onassis, Gore Vidal was a leftist novelist and polemicist. Armed with deep-seated distrust and enmity, Vidal and Buckley believed each other’s political ideologies were dangerous for America. (Courtesy Sundance)

Rising above the headwaters of the sacred Ganges River in Northern India, the magnificent Shark’s Fin of Mount Meru is a 21,000-foot peak stacked with so many obstacles that it’s both a nightmare and an irresistible siren call for the world’s toughest climbers—many of whom have attempted and failed to summit the elusive mountain. Meru is the electrifying story of three elite American climbers—Conrad Anker, Jimmy Chin, and Renan Ozturk—bent on achieving the impossible.
(Courtesy Sundance)

Director Michael Almereyda appeared as a panelist at the 4th Woodstock Film Festival in 2003, his new filmEXPERIMENTERis set to make its debut in Park City. The film also features part time Hudson Valley resident John Leguizamo.

In 1961, social psychologist Stanley Milgram conducted the "obedience experiments" at Yale University. The experiments observed the responses of ordinary people asked to send harmful electrical shocks to a stranger. Despite pleadings from the person they were shocking, 65 percent of subjects obeyed commands from a lab-coated authority figure to deliver potentially fatal currents. With Adolf Eichmann’s trial airing in living rooms across America, Milgram’s Kafkaesque results hit a nerve, and he was accused of being a deceptive, manipulative monster.

EXPERIMENTER invites us inside Milgram’s whirring mind, beginning with his obedience research and wending a path to uncover how inner obsessions and the times in which he lived shaped a parade of human behavior inquiries, including the “six degrees of separation” findings. Constantly subverting expectations with surprising structural and stylistic choices, writer/director Michael Almereyda transmutes the crusty period biopic form into something playful, energetic, and deeply satisfying—taking bold risks to yield profound insights, like all great experiments. (Courtesy Sundance)

Rodrigo Garcia's NINE LIVES was a 2005 WFF Official Selection. The filmmaker's new feature film, re-imagines the final days of Christ.

Ewan McGregor is mesmerizing as he takes on two of history’s most complicated and misunderstood characters: Jesus Christ and the Devil.

Director Rodrigo Garcia reimagines Christ’s last days of fasting in the desert as he walks back to civilization. In the midst of the harsh landscape, fatigued and hallucinating, Christ is met by the Devil, who is eager to test and tempt the weary traveler. Their profound ruminations on faith and truth demonstrate Garcia’s power as a screenwriter and McGregor’s determination to portray Jesus in a different light. By focusing on Christ's fallibility and innocence, new dimensions of the prophet and the man create a fascinating character study. But Christ’s real test comes when he befriends a family on his travels and is caught up in a dispute that forces a powerful confrontation with his own fate. (Courtesy Sundance)

SUNDANCE: NEXT

Starring Kitana Kiki Rodriguez, Mya Taylor and Karren Karagulian

TANGERINEDirected by Sean Baker

Sean Baker took home the 2008 WFF Maverick Award for Best Feature Film for Prince of Broadway, then screened Starlet in 2012. He now returns to Sundance with the drama TANGERINE.

It's Christmas Eve in Tinseltown, and Sin-Dee is back on the block. Upon hearing that her pimp boyfriend hasn't been faithful during the 28 days she was locked up, the working girl and her best friend, Alexandra, embark on a mission to get to the bottom of the scandalous rumor. Their rip-roaring odyssey leads them through various subcultures of Los Angeles, including an Armenian family dealing with their own repercussions of infidelity.

Director Sean Baker’s prior films brought rich texture and intimate detail to worlds seldom seen on film. Tangerine follows suit, bursting off the screen with energy and style. Exhibiting fierce chemistry with his actors to fashion a dazzlingly distinctive film filled with humor and heart, Baker’s talent is on full display. A decidedly modern Christmas tale told on the real streets of L.A.,Tangerine defies expectation—a veritable cinematic jolt. (Courtesy Sundance)

WFF 2014 Official Selection Little Accidents will make its theatrical premiere January 16.

After a mine collapses in a small Appalachian community, sole survivor Amos Jenkins (beautifully played by Boyd Holbrook), finds himself embroiled in a court case surrounding the disaster. Families of deceased co-workers expect him to testify that the accident was the coal company's fault while miners untouched by the tragedy want him to keep quiet.

When the son of the mine's boss goes missing, a chain reaction is set off that impacts three very different families and gives an intimate view of what life is really like in the rust-belt.

Debut director Sara Colangelo handles her cast with such sensitivity and finesse that, while steeped in anguish, LITTLE ACCIDENTS is a beautiful, touching gem.

LOITERING WITH INTENTJanuary 16 (limited)
Directed by Adam Rapp(@kidsandwolves)whose film Winter Passing screened at the 2005 Woodstock FIlm FEstival.

LOITERING WITH INTENT starring WFF alums Sam Rockwell and Brian Gerraghty as well as Marisa Tomei comes to theaters on January 16. The movie was filmed in New York's Hudson Valley in 2013.

After a chance run-in with a film producer eager to invest in a new project, aspiring writers Dominic (Michael Godere) and Raphael (Ivan Martin) need to come up with a script fast, so the pair head to the seclusion of upstate New York to churn out their masterpiece. But when Dominic’s siren of a sister (Marisa Tomei) turns up desperate for reprieve from her boyfriend (Sam Rockwell), they soon realize they’re in for more than they bargained for as their creative retreat is increasingly waylaid by uninvited guests, romantic entanglements, and unexpected distractions. Isabelle McNally and a hilarious Brian Geraghty round out the ensemble cast of New York art world characters in this romantic comedy from director Adam Rapp. -Cara Cusumano (Tribeca Film Festival)

The keyboard, organ, piano and saxophone parts for All About That Bass, by Meghan Trainor, were recorded in Boiceville, Ulster County, by musician David Baron. The song was also nominated for song of the year.

"I'm overwhelmed" said Baron, who will perform New Year's Eve at the Towne Crier Cafe in Beacon with Woodstock musician Simi Stone. "I'm very grateful. It's like winning the lottery. it's like the gods shining down on you." (excerpted from Poughkeepsie Journal)

The Paul Green Rock Academywill be hosting Stevie Wonder Tribute: A Benefit For The Woodstock Day School on January 3 at 7pm at the Bearsville Theater.

FOOD NEWS

The Woodstock Film Festival welcomes a new restaurant to town. Shindig is co-owened by Lari Lang, daughter of long time friend and WFF advisory board member Michael Lang, and by Ryan Giuliani, long time friend and supporter of the Woodstock Film Festival.

If its scrumptious Hudson Valley granola that you want, mouth watering Grilled Cheese sandwich or healthy and tasty Grain Salad, or just people watching in the heart of Woodstock, Shindig is a great place to be in the new year.